Performers

Curios’ unique sound is a product of the rare musical empathy between the three musicians; Cawley, bass player Sam Burgess and young drummer Joshua Blackmore. They have been lauded in the press: ‘Cawley writes music with an emotional amplitude rare in jazz’ (The Times); ‘Three sharp musical minds in perfect accord’ (The Observer); ‘Deeply personal, highly evolved music’ (MOJO magazine); ‘A shining light for British jazz’ (Musician magazine); ‘World-class’ (The Guardian)

Kit Downes plays regularly with his own Trio and Quintet, Stan Sulzmann’s ‘Neon’, Troyka, The Golden Age of Steam, Sam Crockatt Quartet and Seb Rochford – he has also played with Julian Arguelles, Lee Konitz, Paul Rogers, Leafcutter John, Micachu, Iain Ballamy, Gwyneth Herbert and Eugene Skeef. He has also performed with leading British bands Fraud, Asaf Sirkis’ Inner Noise, Gilad Atzmon’s Orient House Ensemble, Acoustic Ladyland, Nostalgia 77, 2000 Black, Silhouette Brown and Dennis Rollins’ Badbone and Co. He worked with composer/songwriter Micachu, with whom he recorded in Abbey Road for Matthew Herbert, recorded for BBC Radio 6 and played at the Sonar Music Festival ’07 in Barcelona. Kit’s work with Empirical took him to The North Sea Jazz Festival, The JVC Festivals in New York, Montreal and Newport, and Vancouver Jazz Festival. Empirical won ‘Best Album of the Year 2007’ in Jazzwise and the EBU Award at the North Sea Festival. Kit won the BBC ‘Rising Star’ Award in 2008 and was nominated for a British Jazz Award in both 2008 and 2009, he also won one of ‘Yamaha Jazz Scholarship’ Awards in 2009. In 2010 Kit’s debut album ‘Golden’ was nominated for a Mercury Music Award. Kit is also a member of the F-IRE Collective, an initiative set up by Barak Schmool, which is a musician-led collective to encourage shared learning and sharing of resources. He enjoys the music of Bill Frisell, Bjork and Bela Bartok, the films of Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch and the artwork of Alberto Giacometti and Joan Miro.

ADMISSION FREE. Joined by a spectacularly tight rhythm section, Kai Hoffman's new quartet project takes the listener on an intimate and (and rather cheeky) journey through lovers, litigation and loss...